Tolls among transit topics to be tackled

Updated 9:56 pm, Tuesday, January 15, 2013

For the third straight year, legislators will again debate establishing electronic tolls on state border roads or other busy stretches to control congestion and raise revenue for state transportation projects.

State Rep. Patricia Dillon, D-New Haven, said she is proposing a bill to bring back tolls, which were abolished in 1987, to state highways, in order to collect revenue from interstate drivers to pay for Connecticut transportation projects.

"In New York and Massachusetts, everybody is used to paying tolls but in Connecticut our roads are packed and we don't have money to fix them," Dillon said. "I understand that the placement will have to be sensitive and we wouldn't want to site tolls any place where people would divert themselves to surrounding roads to bypass it."

"We're looking at border tolls in fixing our roads and bridges that are in dire need of repair," Guerrera said. --¦We can't just keep putting Band-Aids on something that really needs a transplant."

While the renewed debate on tolls is expected to be central, state Rep. Gail Lavielle, R-Wilton, and state Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton, are also seeking to fast-track a $290 million plan to electrify Metro-North Railroad's Danbury branch and its extension to New Milford, the installation of Wi-Fi technology on New Haven Line cars, expand parking, and otherwise boost rail amenities.

Boucher said Fairfield County legislators will continue to try to block most tolls proposals over concerns about congestion and the economic squeeze it would put on many Connecticut drivers in combination with the state's high gasoline taxes.

"It will just be another thing we have to pay, adding more cost to living and working here," Boucher said. "It's an example of the type of thinking that is making the state less competitive all the time."

For a second session in a row, Lavielle is bringing forward a bill to require the state to use revenue generated by scheduled Metro-North rail and Connecticut Transit bus fare hikes to increase service, maintenance, or operations on those modes of transportation.

Last week, state Department of Transportation Commissioner Jim Redeker said the notion behind earmarking funds for service improvements is misguided because the state's Special Transportation Fund provides hundreds of millions of other state revenue toward transit improvements and the required operational subsidy to operate the railroad.

Another proposal Lavielle hopes to will pass would prohibit further transit fare increases on commuters while personal income of state residents has not increased.

Beginning last January, New Haven Line and Shore Line East riders have seen the first of a series of seven annual fare increases through 2018 that will raise ticket prices 19.25 percent.

"It seems like they drove up those fares at a time when people were seeing their income go lower and lower," Lavielle said. "If you are starting to have to pay more and more just to go to work it doesn't seem to be paying attention to what has been a very difficult sequence of many years with the economy."

Lavielle is also proposing the DOT to establish a plan to put Wi-Fi services on the state's new M-8 rail cars, an amenity she considers long overdue for the cars that began service in March 2011.

Metro-North is now in negotiating with Cablevision to develop Wi-Fi and digital screen networks for Metro-North and Long Island Railroad trains, railroad spokeswoman Marjorie Anders said.

"It seems like it has taken an awful long time and people spend hours and hours on these trains," Lavielle said. "I don't know why it is taking so long and I think it is something they could do right away to make commuting more accommodating for the higher fares people are paying."

Other legislative proposals be touted in the committee include:

Requiring the DOT to develop an inventory of all available parking spaces along the New Haven Line and a plan how to increase parking availability at rail stations.

Increase fines for a first offense of distracted driving from $100 to $150. Second and third offenses would face higher fines of $300 and $500.

Require bicyclists to ride single file on state roadways.

Extend the validity of weekly or monthly Metro-North rail passes to compensate riders for service outages in excess of 48 hours.

This month, the state will begin spending $2.2 million for two studies funded through the Federal Highway Administration's Value Pricing Pilot Program, one a $1.4 million examination of so-called congestion price tolls on Interstate 95 to generate revenue for transportation projects and the second an $800,000 review of the feasibility of using tolls and other ways to curb congestion on highways around Hartford, said DOT Chief of Policy and Planning Tom Maziarz.

Congestion price tolls -- the practice of charging more to use roads at peak times, is geared to changing the behavior of drivers, ideally to alter their mode of travel.

"Particular to the way we're going to structure the study, we want to figure out if congestion price tolls by itself can provide some relief," Maziarz said. "...We're also going to look at physical improvements to the transportation infrastructure that could be done that could also relieve congestion."

Floyd Lapp, executive director for the South Western Regional Planning Agency, which handles transportation planning for the eight towns from Greenwich to Westport, said the concept of congestion pricing seemed most feasible in Connecticut, where some options were made less feasible on I-95, which is sandwiched tightly by development in establishing additional lanes.

"At the time I-95 was built in Connecticut people probably thought a three-lane interstate was going to work down the ages, not knowing that traffic was going to grow exponentially," Lapp said.